RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
Question: It seems to me that politics surrounding/related to terrorism (for lack of a better phrase on my part) is the impetus behind the Muslim ecumenical movement. Do you know if there was a political reason for the ecumenical movement in the US, and later for Pope John Paul and the Catholic church, or was it an idea whose time had come?
Answer: On principle, all activity is integrated and politics is an activity, therefore, all activity has a political component. This does not mean necessarily a partisan political component but certain it does mean a political component in the sense of participants in an activity mutually attempting to understand, prioritize and direct the multi-dimensional unity that is the reality to which the activity is meant to respond.
A particular activity, such as those you mention, will have multiple political components, many difficult to discern, and many of those made deliberately so. It is part of a true politician’s task to discern all relevant political components in a situation, weigh them for rectitude — on a scale, some will be and some will not be — and then direct them to a mutual fulfillment, which for some may be destruction. That fulfillment will always be a self-transcendence of each and all of those components into a fresh and increasingly expansive stabilization of their essences. That process, of course, never ends.
The politics of The Amman Message involve a critical component that is unknown to the majority of our citizens: the Sauds are usurpers and the Hashemites are the legitimate bearers of the leadership of Arab culture and the Muslim Nation. The personal and governmental behavior of the Sauds, and their support of the Wahhabists, shows their usurper status just as the behavior of the Hashemites and their support of ecumenicity, including with other religions, shows their status of legitimacy.
For details, see this, and for a little expanded current application see this.
If by “ecumenical movement in the US” you mean the Protestant Ecumenical Movement, I would say, certainly there were political components to that and also it was an idea whose time had come. The political components of the Protestant Ecumenical Movement, here and abroad, trace to the churches’ answers to Nazism and its polar opposite Communism, and the wars it took to rid man of that apostasy and that heresy, respectively — different but evil ideologies, comprising powerful epistemological distortions. They did not derive from simple tyrannical impulses. Saddam, BTW, got his ideological power from the Communist side of that polarity through a famous Sorbonne-educated (along with Pol Pot and many others like) Syrian.
The churches struggled with these heresies as they did with so many before. Their responses were neither uniform nor uniformly proper. Politics was embedded in all of those responses. For example, the Vatican early on agreed to support Hitler in exchange for his leaving the clergy alone (to collect their funds). That arrangement continued all through and after the war. It explains why the German Army uncovered Rome, which would have been pounded had they made a stand there, as well they could have.
Similarly, Protestant churches more or less accommodated the Communists, as they do still strongly today. In fact, most clergy in the “mainline denominations” are Communist rather than Christian in their point of view. This explains their opposition to nearly anything originating from the Executive Branch of our government, no matter which party holds it, and especially do they oppose any effort to establish US-style democracy anywhere in the world — because our federal system is not socialist (meaning, more-or-less Communist).
When Dave Sutor was reported to have spent a weekend on his yacht with a ranking Episcopal clergyman for the purpose of discerning whether he should accept the President’s nomination to the Supreme Court, I said to myself, “He will be a liberal [meaning, socialist] and the President must know that.”
There are strong socialist elements in the Republican party — e.g., Bushes and Rockefellers, though they are political enemies, both have socialist affections, particularly Rockefellers … or at least for public consumption. Jay Rockefeller is a Democrat because the family decided to put him in a state where he could win a seat and West Virginia is Democratic. Earlier, the family had does similarly with Jay’s uncle Winthrop and Arkansas, which was Republican.
The Rockefellers, BTW, are Baptists, closely connected with Union, my alma mater. JD II built Riverside Church, next Union, for the famous Baptist clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was my father’s homiletics professor at Union. Fosdick was a famous radio preacher of his day.
Another historical note: the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was developed from Union and I attended meetings in the room and at the table where the committee sat. The names of the committee members were engraved on brass plaques set into the table before their place at it. Union was the first northern seminary to support the reconstruction of education in the South after the war. Everyone else was for vengeance, specifically, do not let them learn. Northerners can be unpretty when they want to be.
The Bushes are Episcopalians connected with Yale, which is connected closely with Union. One of their Skull and Bones fraternity brothers, Henry Sloan Coffin, was the finest President Union ever had and presided when my father was there. My mother had a lovely note from him congratulating her on my birth. It is gone now but I had seen it. Another of their Skull and Bones mates, William Sloan Coffin, nephew of Henry, became Chaplain to Yale during the Vietnam War and became the first prominent Protestant clergyman to oppose that battle. Bill later was appointed senior pastor at Riverside Church. He is still alive and still a very secularly oriented chap, not especially religious in any way at all, he illustrates the Communist affections of the Protestant Ecumenical Movement.
The truth is that this Communist-conditioned Protestant Ecumenical Movement — exemplified by the World Council of Churches in Switzerland and the National Council of Churches in our country — is not truly ecumenical. It seeks to draw together the Protestant and Orthodox churches and, tepidly, with the Vatican — though under the socialist ideology, not under Christianity — but it does not try to and indeed rejects drawing together other religions by declaring them as valid as Christianity. The reason for that is turf wars, meaning, money and power.
The Vatican, also, is not truly ecumenical with regard to other religions and not even with regard to the Protestant and Orthodox churches. Pope John XXIII was not an ecumenist, neither in the sense of embracing Protestants as true Christians nor in the sense of embracing the non-Christian religions as valid. I regard his legacy as essentially negative, especially his removal of Latin in the Mass. This was profoundly demoralizing to religious people, for some very good pietistical and theological reasons. He was probably involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, which was initiated by Khrushchev and carried out variously by most of the characters usually mentioned as possible perps. President Kennedy was taking the country and the church away from socialist ideology and toward a Christian one, despite his and his wife’s(!) personal habits.
Pope John Paul I may have started a true ecumenical movement but he was assassinated in an internal Vatican turf war that, surprisingly, Coppolla got reasonably accurately in Godfather III. It is also possible that he may have continued the socialist attitudes of John XXIII. John Paul II was involved in that assassination and brought back to the Vatican its pre-Vatican II attitude of supporting the right rather than the left wing of the Nazi-Communist socialist polarity. That is, he restored the pre-Vatican II hegemonistic agenda which Paul VI had been instituting. John Paul II was an evil man.
Nowhere has the Vatican embraced Protestants and Orthodox as equals, much less non-Christian religions. The day that happens — and it is possible — will be the day the Roman Church itself is relocated from Rome to its true seat in Milan, in the Ambrosian Rite of the ruling Roman families, whose last representative on the See of Rome was Gregory I. All popes since Gregory I have been descendants of invaders. The Milanese church, liberated from the Vatican, is truly Catholic and Roman, that is, truly ecumenical.
The minority, almost invisible voice of the Protestant churches to emerge from the wars against Nazism and Communism — the true Protestant Ecumenical Movement — is a truly ecumenical one and counts among its proponents Paul Tillich, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and this writer.
The Amman Message and its recent promulgation, under Hashemite sponsorship, by a conclave of clerics representing the eight schools of Islam is welcome because it is a truly ecumenical approach — which means a truly religious one — from a visible and now majority voice inside a valid religion. This is cause for great happiness.
[Note: I have since reversed this assessment, following the professional analysis of The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie.]
For, only a true ecumenism can form the basis for defeating the thugism that threatens to overwhelm humanity. Religion cannot and will not be dismissed or separated from any aspect of life whatsoever and therefore it is required of all leaders to grasp the meaning and practice the modes of true ecumenism.
“Religion is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion.” Paul Tillich
And, this is also an idea whose time has come and primarily because of the presence of Sathya Sai Baba and his previous embodiment, Shirdi Sai Baba, who was a Muslim. The Sarva Dharma Symbol Sai drew on the back of an envelope in 1972 describes the true ecumenical approach and agenda.
These considerations are preliminary and partial only. They touch on only a few aspects of the political components that inhere in the activities discussed.
Update 1: And Al Saud intends to keep it up.
Update 2: However, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that no such star is high on the list of those being mentioned.
Assuming those stars actually have light sufficient for a career of staring, I’m glad none is on Trump’s short list — precisely because they are political stars, careerist professional politicians!!!
I’d like in office anyone BUT a professional politician, anyone BUT one who craves the office, anyone who is NOT thinking about THEIR future. The very mind-set which produces the concept of a political star with a future I find smug, anxious, cynical, elitist, and un-American.
If you want my vote because you want your concept of a career for yourself, you don’t give a damn about my soul and you don’t deserve my vote. You deserve the sole of my shoe.
Update 3: The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie: Ishmael Is Not The Father Of The Arabs
AMDG – VICTORY
